She shook her head. “Have you ever fired a handgun like a .45?”
“Not in real life but I’ve played simulated shooter games since I was six. I hate to brag but I’m pretty good. From junior high on, I beat Todd Graham two hundred and sixty-three times in a row until he cheated and broke into the code, reprogrammed the game with his own secret moves.”
“Simulated shooter games?”
“Hey, I’ve killed hundreds of thousands of zombies.”
“Zombies on Mars, your first venture into the dangers in the universe after nuclear war here on earth. It might not have been as successful as Hidden Cities but it was damn clever.”
He smiled, adjusted his glasses. “Thanks for that.”
“No problem. But your impressive zombie statistics aside, even geeks need to spend time at the firing range to hone their accuracy, especially since your skills at hand-to-hand are less than stellar. You’ll need to rely on your weapon. There’s a place I go to get out of the city.”
“Okay. So, after we stuff our faces with spaghetti, we lock and load. Got it. I hate to point it out but my less than stellar skills reflect poorly on my lousy instructor.”
“You are such a wiseass, Ander. You know that?” She chewed her lip before admitting, “And unfortunately correct. I am a lousy teacher. But then I tried to warn you.”
“I know. At the time, it sounded like a good idea.”
“Yeah, sadly, so many things do.”
Once they finished dinner they drove thirty miles north of Seattle to the pistol range belonging to none other than Travis Nakota. Turns out, Travis owned forty acres outside Everett that hugged the Washington coastline where he bred and sold American Paint Horses.
As they turned off the main road, the headlights of Skye’s Subaru lit up the entrance. They crossed under an impressive iron gate topper which hung across the opening and signified the name of the ranch. The Painted Crow.
Once they crawled out of the car Josh finally got to meet the infamous Travis Nakota. The fifty-year-old man stood about five-feet-ten with a long black ponytail that trailed down his back and not a hint of gray anywhere on his head.
Josh sensed a man carrying a major chip on his shoulder that had everything to do with the man Skye had brought with her. Although Travis did shake hands with Josh, the man did nothing more than grunt in Josh’s direction, especially after spotting the wedding ring still prominent on Josh’s left hand.
Josh got the distinct impression Travis wasn’t all that happy to make his acquaintance. Because Travis Nakota acted like a disgruntled, over-protective father, who wasn’t the least bit glad to see a man in the company of the woman he thought of like a daughter. Or so it seemed to Josh. He looked on as Skye hugged the older man and watched as Travis actually showed a perfect smile when he grinned back. But not at Josh.
Travis pretty much ignored Josh even as he took out his keys and unlocked the barn-like structure which housed the firing range. When Travis hit the lights, Josh noticed the inside stuck to the same no-frills theme as the gym Travis owned. But the place was out in the boonies and secluded and—a lot roomier than the place where they worked out. The spacious interior consisted of only four shooting stations but each one had its own front counter to hold extra weapons and ammo. Paper targets dangled from a two-by-four stud at distances between fifty and eighty yards from each enclosure. There was an automatic target retrieval system, which now that Josh took the time to look around meant the place was pretty fancy for a bare bones setup. He was beginning to think there was a lot more to Travis Nakota than the owner of a greasy spoon diner. Maybe later he’d ask Skye about the guy’s background.
“There’s also an outside rifle range,” Skye told Josh, as she removed both weapons from their casings and placed them on the counter in the first station.
“Doesn’t all the noise bother the horses,” Josh asked and earned a glare from the horse breeder.
“What kind of horse owner do you think I am?” Travis barked. “A horse can be trained to react to any number of sounds and that includes gunfire.”
“Travis, I’m sure Josh didn’t mean anything,” Skye said.
“It was a stupid question from a city boy who wouldn’t know a horse from a donkey,” Travis groused right before turning to Skye, all conciliatory. “Take all the time you need, Skye. Just let me know when you’re done so I can lock up.” And with that, Travis slammed the door as he went out.
“He doesn’t like me,” Josh complained.
“He does seem to be in a mood. I don’t know what’s wrong with him tonight.”
“Are you in the habit of bringing strange men around him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous—”
“There’s your answer.”
“What? No way.” Then the truth started to sink in. “Ah. Oh. Well…hmm.”
“Exactly.” Josh eyed the weapons on the counter. “They’re both Colts,” he said as he picked up the smaller .380, weighed it against the larger model, the .45 caliber. “Nice guns. You can handle the kick on this baby?”
She looked insulted. “That’s right. It took me awhile to get used to it. But I put in lots of practice. Both Colts belonged to my father.”
“He taught you?”
She shook her head. “No. Travis did that once I moved back to Seattle. If you’re ready, let’s start with the basics. First, check to see if the safety’s on and if it’s loaded. Next keep the gun pointed in a safe direction until you’re ready to fire. Always keep your trigger finger straight and outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot. Like this.” She picked up the bigger Colt and demonstrated. “And never point the gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot. Got it?”
“Got it.”
She took him through another walk-through on safety, another demo on loading and unloading before finally telling him, “Now you try.” Skye placed the .45 on the shooting table with the clip beside it and stepped aside to let Josh have a go at it. She watched as he repeated the process. “Good. Okay, now put on your ear protectors and let’s see how you handle pulling the trigger.”
Josh adjusted his glasses right before he dealt with the bulky, but necessary, ear muffs, then slowly pushed the clip into the gun handle until he heard it lock into place. He flipped off the safety and chambered a round.
“Very good,” she muttered, clearly impressed with how well he picked up the mechanics. “Show me what you got, Gameboy.”
And he did. He was incredibly accurate for his first time at shooting a heavy handgun. As soon as he’d emptied the clip of the big Colt, a thought occurred to her. “Okay, what other firearms have you handled before tonight?”
“Just a rifle, a .22, shot tin cans on my one and only hunting expedition with a group of guys I briefly tried to impress in high school.”
“Well, you did good with the .45. Now try the smaller one. See which one handles better.”
He changed out Colts, loaded the much lighter .380 himself, took aim and fired. After several rounds he put it down and stated, “Nope, I like the bigger gun, it has a better feel in my hands, smooth, a better all-around firing experience.”
She grinned. “You’ll have to fight me for it then,” she said with a wink.
“That’s not fair, you’ll win.”
She tilted her head. “Guess what, Josh?”
“What?”
“You’re a better shot than I am.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“No, it’s true. You were right though. You’re a natural. But practice makes perfect.” So she took him through the drill again and made him repeat the entire process. They spent the next hour practicing their aim.
They didn’t get back to the loft until after midnight and went straight to bed. But once she fell asleep, Skye’s dreams came to her in black and gray images. The past wasn’t full of pretty pastels. Not for her. Too often, she found herself back in that messy bedroom with Whitfield.
There were details she wished she could block o
ut forever.
At twelve when the young girl had awaken in that strange place for the first time and found herself in an unfamiliar bed, the air around her had been heavy with stale cigarette smoke, leftover beer, and sweat. The sweat might’ve been her own because she was scared to death.
Beyond the closed door she heard a television blare with some sporting event, baseball maybe, with the announcers deep into the action, the game. Beyond that, she thought she heard children’s voices, playing outside—nearby yet too far away to help. The sounds made her realize she was in an apartment complex very close to a playground like the one where he’d snatched her. Stupid. Stupid. She’d been stupid for believing the man’s story about his little girl.
If not for the rag stuffed in her mouth, she would have screamed her head off. Her wrists were bound together and tied to the bed post above her head. She wasn’t wearing clothes. Her head hurt from what felt like someone had yanked on her hair. One spot on her arm hurt like it did when the nurse at the doctor’s office gave her a shot. Then she remembered the man had taken out a needle and stuck it in her arm. That was the last thing she had remembered before coming awake in this awful place.
When the bedroom door flew open, petrified, she thought she might throw up. Her eyes darted to the man’s stringy hair, his slim build, the tattoos on his arms, a snake on one, a tiger on the other. Determined to memorize those few details, she cringed at his approach.
“You’re awake? Good.” He stroked her hair, removing the rubber band that held it back in place as he went. At his touch, she longed for the drug to take her under again to blackness, blackness had to be better than what was about to happen.
Fear wedged in her throat and stomach, and remembering that fear, she started to moan in torment, flaying about. In anger, in defeat, she grabbed the sheet around her in closed fists.
The restlessness of the woman beside him woke Josh. As she wrestled with the air in sleep there was no mistaking the wave of terror drowning her in the past, the way her head went from side-to-side had Josh cautious even in the simple gesture of putting his hand out to touch her.
So he watched and he waited until her eyes finally flew open. As soon as he realized she was awake, he reached out so he could draw her into his arms, placed a kiss on her forehead. “Bad dream?”
“It’s nothing. I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”
Patience, he thought and knew he needed to proceed with care. “You know better than that. Are you okay now that you’re awake? Is there anything I can do?”
She smiled and shook her head, then immediately curled into his body. Right now she needed the safe touch of another person. Touching, being with him, having his arms wrapped around her, maybe that was the answer. Before she lost her nerve, in one quick motion, she moved over him, straddled his belly. She found his hands, brought them up to mold her bare breasts. “I want you, Josh. Now! I’m alive. After these many years, I have to be grateful for that. I want you to take that awful memory away once and for all. I want to feel you inside me. You, Josh, only you.”
He closed around her with equal measures of heat and need swimming in the depths. He wanted to give her what she needed. It wasn’t the time to tell her, to unburden his heart and soul with all he felt for her. So he would give her the now. He had to believe there was power in the moment. That they could love each other this minute and it would be enough to carry them through whatever tomorrow held.
She rode the tide quick and fast, her head spinning with ripples of delight she’d never known were possible. When he rose up to cover her mouth, when their eyes met and held, Skye knew at that moment she’d found her mate—and relished in the knowing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
At first light, a restless Skye crawled naked out of bed to shower and get ready for what would be her fifth trip in as many years to Tacoma. Funny how such a short forty-five minute jaunt could create such dread and heaviness around her heart.
Could it be a bad idea to go out there again? She felt the overwhelming burden of worry all the way to her bones. But she’d been out there before and nothing bad had ever happened. Of course, that had been before she’d known about the cabin, before Josh had discovered all the utility accounts for service. Whitfield had to be living in that damned cabin.
She had to clear her mind to everything except finding those girls and to learning whether or not Whitfield was the definitive link. Harry would want proof and she was determined to get that.
When Josh joined her in the shower, the rest of her angst drained away completely. Having his hands on her again, was the thrill, the exhilaration she needed. As they started soaping each other, she had to admit she couldn’t get enough of the man. Who knew sex with Josh Ander would be so addictive?
She looked up into those gray eyes that always managed to draw her in and said flatly, “We could postpone this.”
Josh didn’t think she was talking about making love. He set her away from him long enough to search her eyes. “Is that what you want? I can go alone, you know. I started to suggest that very thing last night but you seemed so determined then. What’s changed?”
“I don’t know. A gut feeling. Maybe I’m getting cold feet. But don’t worry. I’m not letting you go by yourself. I know we’re doing this because of me. If anything happens…”
“It’s my choice, Skye.”
“That’s just it, Josh. You don’t have to do this for me.”
“I admit I’m not much backup in a fight, but two has to be better than one. You aren’t going out there alone.”
As they dried off and went out to the bedroom to get dressed, she had to hope that two would indeed be enough if they did encounter Whitfield. She had no idea what had happened to the woman who’d been gunning for the dipshit ever since she’d turned eighteen and came back to Seattle to live. Now she wasn’t even certain that woman existed. Was Josh responsible for that as well?
Pulling on her jeans, she decided she had to get out of this funk. She had less than an hour to get her act together.
As she made her way to the kitchen to start a pot of much-needed coffee for her already jittery stomach, she decided the son of a bitch was more than likely two thousand miles away from Tacoma tucked into some obscure community doing God knows what to its youth.
And she wasn’t exactly sure how she’d feel if she had to come away from Tacoma empty-handed again.
Two hours later as the sun tried to break through a low-hanging marine layer hugging along the ground, Josh and Skye looked down from the same ridge where they’d left the car. They stared across the treetops at Commencement Bay, and ultimately to the seventy-five acres that belonged to Fred and Millicent Whitfield.
Fred and Millie had no children of their own. But from what Skye had been able to ascertain from public records, the couple had taken their nephew in after Ronny’s young mother had died of a drug overdose before celebrating her twenty-first birthday. Whoever had fathered young Ronny had apparently never been a part of his son’s life. So when the authorities were on the brink of drumming the four-year-old into the system, Fred and Millie had stepped forward to see that didn’t happen.
That meant Ronny had grown up here among a smattering of tide flats and a strip of beachfront before it wove back into a stretch of timberland full of Douglas fir, cedar, and spruce.
Skimming the treetops, Josh thought the entire place smelled like a gigantic Christmas tree lot. He had to remind himself that this might be the lair of a sexual predator.
Because they approached from the back side of the property, they had to trek a good half mile through a copse of trees and riparian vegetation to reach the cabin.
Isolated and rugged, the terrain along the way was chocked full of slender waterleaf just beginning to flower with their little purplish blossoms and the lily-like red trillium. The Pacific willow hadn’t yet budded out, but it would. Come summer, its yellow catkins would make a contrast to the white parsley that grew companionably beside it. Ev
en Skye had to convince herself that such a beautiful stretch of land could belong to the home of her nemesis. Surely the monster didn’t exist in such a pristine setting.
They hiked past a variety of sedges where hardhack grew in abundance before making their way up a hillside covered with wild gooseberry and blueberry vines. She could smell Canada mint and recognized its pinkish-purple clumps on the stems. If the land had belonged to anyone else, Skye would’ve loved to spend her time doing nothing more than exploring the habitat, maybe gathering some cuttings to take back home to transplant in her ugly, cheap plastic tub.
But she hadn’t come here to sight-see or collect foliage.
The ground beneath their feet was uneven and muddy, the going slow until they crossed into a small clearing. Here they could pick up their pace, save for the bits of loose rocks and stones littering the earth that hampered their footing.
When Kiya appeared out of the mist, Josh bumped Skye’s arm. “You may be used to that, but it still takes some getting used to.”
Skye’s lips curved up and it was the first time since they’d left Seattle that she seemed less nervous. “It does take a leap of faith I know. But she isn’t corporeal. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to think of her as simply a spirit, an inner life force guiding me on the path I was meant to take.”
“For a wolf that isn’t real, she’s magnificent in size and color. I still can’t get over the eyes. I’d say you hit the jackpot in the spirit guide department. If I’d had one, I like to think mine would’ve been a ferocious saber-toothed tiger.” He thought for a moment before adding, “Or maybe a modern-day panther, sleek, fast and black. Yeah, the panther would be ideal.”
“What about the cheetah? It’s fast.”
“That too. But I’d definitely take the cat family. Imagine following the magnificent jaguar, leopard, maybe even a cougar. Any of those would be fierce.”
“Trouble with spirit guides is you don’t get to pick yours. Remember Travis? His was the crow. You know, like that movie The Crow with Brandon Lee.”
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